Chapter 5

I was in the classroom at FAETU teaching a class in electronic warfare when I was called out to take an emergency phone call. It was my next door neighbor calling from the Portsmouth Naval Hospital. She told me MaryAnn was having severe abdominal pains and had been taken to the by ambulance to the hospital. I told my CO what was happening and jumped in the car to get to my wife’s side as quick as I could.

When I got to the hospital I was put in a waiting room for over an hour until a young intern who looked about twelve came in the room. He said “LT Davis?” I said “yes, how is my wife?” He said “I have good news and bad news.” Jesus, this guy must have skipped the bedside manners class. “We had to remove her right ovary, but she can still have children with one ovary.” I look at him with a question. “Why did you remove her ovary?” He said, “It’s not that rare that she had an ectopic pregnancy, that is when the zygote fails to fully transverse to the uterus and the fertilized ovum begins to cell divide in the Fallopian tube. When the zygote becomes large enough to distort the Fallopian tube it cause severe pain.

“Next question Doc. If the husband has had a vasectomy, how can this happen?” The look on the interns face was almost worth the pain I was feeling. He mumbled something like “You should discuss that with your wife.”

At this point in the narrative I have to decide whether to lapse into fiction and fabricate an emotional confrontation with the lying and cheating bitch. But, to my regret now, I must take the far less satisfying and dramatic path, the truth. I sat in the waiting room and mentally constructed the future. Do I want to divorce the slut and move into the BOQ and go through financially ruinous path of lawyers and custody battles? No. I don’t. When MaryAnn was discharged about 8PM I walked her to the front entrance and went to get the car with minimal talk. When we were on the road to Virginia Beach and the new house, I asked if she is going to divorce me and marry Victor since she appears to want to start a family with him. All I got out of her was “I can’t think or talk about anything right now. I just had surgery and I want to go to bed – alone.” We had a big ‘70s station wagon with three grade school aged kids in the back seat so our discussion was guarded. “Little pitchers have big ears” my mother used to say when she and my Dad were having “discussions.”

The next few days after were arrived there was a lot of silence around the house. About a week she said the Dreaded Words: “We have to talk.” She said “Yes, I want a divorce. I have a lawyer and he wants to talk to both of us.” I snapped back “Hell no. I will not sit in some sleazy divorce lawyer’s office and destroy our lives.”